'My brother's drink-drive killer needed help, not punishment': How the sister of a tragic crash victim turned her 'pain into purpose'

When her beloved brother was killed at 25 by a drunk driver, Jacquie Johnston-Lynch turned her ‘pain into purpose’ by launching hip nonalcoholic bar The Brink. She tells Eve McGowan how the project has transformed – and even saved – lives

Jacquie at The Brink, the dry bar she masterminded

With its leather banquettes, colourful cocktail menu and display of modern artwork, The Brink has all the style and ambience you’d expect from a popular bar in the centre of Liverpool. Its cryptic name is the only clue to the unique concept behind its funky exterior.

The Brink is a dry bar, meaning no alcohol is served, and its staff are mostly people in recovery from alcoholism themselves. The cocktails are booze-free, and – discreetly tucked away at the back of the light and airy main space – there are two treatment rooms where those in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction can drop in for group sessions or one-to-one counselling. ‘We named it The Brink because so many people have been sent to the brink through alcohol and never come back,’ says founder Jacquie Johnston-Lynch.

Relaxing with a mineral water in the bar she masterminded, Jacquie’s no-nonsense manner masks the family tragedy that inspired its creation. She has more reason than most to want the rehabilitation of alcoholics to improve. Her younger brother Garry was killed in 1992 at the age of 25 by a drunk driver whose car mounted the pavement, mowing him down as he was walking home from a night out with friends.

Jacquie and her brother Garry in 1978

The driver, a single man in his 30s, was a repeat drink driver. ‘He’d been caught at the wheel under the influence on four or five previous occasions,’ says Jacquie, 51. ‘He was never helped; he’d only ever been punished. They put points on his licence, banned him, and sent him on a road safety course. No one ever said, “You’re a repeat offender – how can we help you?” If someone had intervened sooner, my brother might still be alive.’

The impact of the crash killed Garry instantly but the driver didn’t stop and was so drunk that he had no recollection of the event when police arrested him at his home the following morning. Only when they pointed out his shattered windscreen covered in blood was he forced to accept what he had done.

Earlier in the evening, a taxi driver had reported a man driving erratically to police and they were looking for him when the accident happened. ‘That made it harder to accept in some ways. You can’t help but keep thinking, “What if they had got there ten minutes earlier?”’ says Jacquie.

Understandably she was full of anger towards the perpetrator in the aftermath of her brother’s death. ‘Garry and I were incredibly close,’ says Jacquie. ‘He had so much to look forward to – he was living with his long-term girlfriend who was devastated by his death.

He was hugely popular with a wide circle of friends. He worked for a computer company and many of his colleagues came to the funeral. In my grief I wrote horrible letters to the drink driver in prison and stood outside his aunt’s house where he had been living and shouted at them.’

Over time her attitude came to change. Jacquie was a qualified social worker and managing an HIV treatment centre at the time of Garry’s death. ‘I thought, “I’m going to have to do something constructive with my grief.” I was offered an opportunity to go on a personal leadership course with an organisation called Clearmind International [a private company, founded in Canada, that offers motivational personal development courses and workshops] through my work. We were taught about “turning pain into purpose” and I realised that’s what I had to do.’

She got a new job managing an addiction treatment centre in Liverpool in 2003, and then, in 2008, Jacquie spotted a gap in the city for a place like The Brink. ‘I was getting people who were two, three, four, five years in recovery asking me, “Why did we get clean and sober? Because there’s nothing for us to do socially.” They felt trapped because everywhere you go serves alcohol – even cinemas and museums these days. I wanted to create something for the recovery community. This is somewhere people can go where alcohol isn’t in the mix.’

When she first raised the idea with the charity she worked for, Action on Addiction, they initially said no as they had no experience in setting up such a project. She persisted until they gave her the green light to look for premises if she could raise the £400,000 needed herself. Jacquie received £250,000 from the Department of Health and got most of the rest of the funding from the Liverpool Primary Care Trust. She also held a fundraising breakfast to gain support from local businesses.

The Brink is a social enterprise, which means that all profits from the bar go directly back to the community to fund support for those who have suffered through alcoholism and addiction. Jacquie credits the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE), where she took several courses, for helping her to crystallise her idea and turn it into reality. Last October she beat off competition from other former SSE students to win a public vote for Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland Social Entrepreneur of the Year award, receiving £10,000 for the bar.

The Duchess of Cambridge visited in 2012 and showed off her smoothie-making skills

When she was looking for premises a local estate agent tipped her off about a derelict warehouse being used as a makeshift garage for some old cars. ‘I’d seen so many places that weren’t suitable, mainly closed-down pubs that didn’t have the right feel or the space for treatment rooms at the back. As soon as I saw this place I knew we could do something with it. I wanted somewhere that was trendy, not something that felt like a community centre or church hall.’

Jacquie explains that while The Brink is never going to appeal to the glammed-up Wag crowd that Liverpool is so famous for, it caters for just about everybody else, hosting gigs, film screenings, open-mic nights, poetry readings and plays. On Sundays, for a discretionary donation (or free to those who can’t afford it), families affected by alcoholism can pop in for a two-hour counselling workshop followed by Sunday lunch.

‘The clientele really varies,’ says Jacquie. ‘It’s not unusual for there to be businessmen having a meeting alongside pensioners having a meal alongside a group of women on a night out. We’re also popular with students, families and teenagers who are too young to go to pubs. The people who come here want a nice night out but not a boozed-up venue.

‘Really good-quality food was important,’ adds Jacquie, who hired her chef after spotting that her favourite local bistro, where he worked, was shutting down. She says they try to keep costs as low as possible. ‘You can get a meal here cheaper than a meal deal in McDonald’s,’ she points out with pride. Main courses start at £3.95 and nonalcoholic cocktails such as Driver’s Dream (pineapple juice, apple juice, elderflower and apple cordial, sparkling water and fruit) are £2.95 each. The menu includes healthy options such as roasted vegetables, hummus and focaccia bread, as well as traditional pub fare such as Sunday roasts and fish and chips.

The Duchess of Cambridge visited The Brink in 2012 on her first solo official visit outside the capital. ‘She was adorable – really insightful and very open,’ says Jacquie. ‘She really understood the issues and was very compassionate with the people she met who were in recovery. She had a private meeting with some of the staff and people who had gone through treatment. She even made a smoothie behind the bar.’

'My brother didn't die in vain: he's changing the lives of so many people through The Brink'

Jacquie’s life has been blighted by alcoholism, making her achievement in setting up The Brink all the more remarkable. Not only did she lose her brother to an alcoholic driver, but her father was an alcoholic. ‘Garry’s death was devastating for everybody. I think my children PJ, who was 11 at the time, and Joseph, who was six, took it the worst. Their own father had left – they had no contact with him at that point – and my brother was a father figure to them. He took them to the football and on days out.

‘Garry was very loved by people. He had a really dry sense of humour. People took to him, he was very engaging and the sort of person you could rely on to do you a favour. He would always help people out. Although he was five years younger than me and I felt protective of him, he always looked out for me. He was the one I’d go to.’

The siblings were brought closer by the trauma of their own father’s alcoholism. ‘He was a binge drinker,’ says Jacquie. ‘He’d go out on a bender and we knew Mum would be in for a hiding when he got back. He beat her in violent rages. We would sit upstairs hugging each other while it was happening.’ Their parents split up when Jacquie was nine and Garry five. Jacquie’s mother left with them in the middle of the night, without any belongings, after a particularly violent attack.

Jacquie describes the area where she grew up – the Kirkdale neighbourhood of Merseyside – as devastated by alcohol and addiction. ‘Mass unemployment in the 1980s meant it was quite a grim place. People wanted escape at any cost, whether that was through alcohol, drugs or both. It was run-down yet the people were fantastic. There was a real community feeling. You could leave your door open and everyone knew each other.’

Perhaps most poignantly, soon after Garry’s death, Jacquie’s son PJ sank into depression and turned to alcohol and drugs. He had been gifted academically and a talented sportsman, playing for Everton’s boys academy. ‘He dropped out of school and took an overdose on the first day of the football season when Everton were playing – a match he would always have gone to with my brother. Luckily I got to him in time.’

Jacquie with staff from the bar and restaurant

PJ’s drinking got progressively worse throughout his teens and early 20s until Jacquie felt compelled to make the difficult decision to throw him out of the house when he was 26. ‘I felt I was enabling his behaviour by keeping a roof over his head,’ she says.

It proved to be just the catalyst he needed. After several months of sofa surfing and six weeks sleeping rough, he hit rock bottom and came to Jacquie for help in conquering his addiction. After that initial stint in rehab he has remained sober for six years, and now coordinates treatment services for alcoholics, which are run from the bar.

‘It’s fantastic that he’s come out on the other side and is doing so well,’ says Jacquie. ‘He’s a great role model to other people in that position.’

Jacquie doesn’t think her mother Maureen, now 75, will ever get over Garry’s death, but says that seeing how she and her son have been galvanised by it ‘helps her come to terms with it on one level’. While PJ and his grandmother like to visit Garry’s grave each year on the anniversary of his death, Jacquie prefers not to.

‘This place is a living legacy,’ she says. ‘This is what his death achieved. It would never have been in my consciousness to do something like this if I hadn’t lost him.’ Jacquie remarried in 2001 and has a ten-year-old son, Jaqson, with her husband Chase. She is thankful that she isn’t an alcoholic, given the problems her father and PJ had. ‘I do think there’s a genetic component, I’ve definitely seen it run in families,’ says Jacquie, who only drinks occasionally at weekends.

‘I don’t have a problem with friends drinking around me, although over the years friends with alcohol problems have come to me for help because they know I work in the field. I don’t think it’s the alcohol itself that’s the problem. It’s the individual. I think some people are predisposed to alcoholism driven by social deprivation and the stress of making ends meet and how easily available it is.’

She blames the rise in cheap supermarket alcohol for the growing problem. ‘It’s so easy for people to drink their troubles away. As life becomes more busy and stressful, people want something to wind down with, but they can end up in a mess. What starts as social drinking can turn into something very isolating and destructive. Because drinking is so socially acceptable the problems it causes are overlooked a lot.’

After setting up the bar in 2011 and seeing it well established, Jacquie has moved on to new pastures (although she will stay on in a consultancy role). She is in the process of developing a residential rehab centre, Tom Harrison House, through a new charity she has set up in partnership with a former colleague, and she is also working for Clearmind International. ‘It’s about leaving legacies. My brother didn’t die in vain: he’s changing the lives of so many people through The Brink.’

The charity behind The Brink now offers a business training service to community groups who would like to set up their own dry bar. So far organisations in London, Newcastle, Glasgow, Nottingham and Brighton have expressed interest. There are also plans for social franchising using The Brink’s branding and business model.

Perhaps surprisingly, Jacquie never uses the story of her brother’s death to try to shock alcoholics into stopping drinking. Rather, she uses it as a story of hope: ‘I like to show people what you can do when you come out on the other side of adversity. It gives people hope that change is possible. It’s a tale of change and transformation.’